Posting For Hope: Bloggers Unite

On Sept. 27, BlogCatalog became the first social network to ask its members to collectively call for an End To Abuse. On thousands of blogs all over the world on the same day, BlogCatalog members and other bloggers did.

Google revealed more than 66,000 mentions of “Bloggers Unite” and abuse; more than 10,000 of those included “BlogCatalog,” linking back to the campaign so other bloggers could be discovered. Collectively, it represents a powerful call for awareness and action that is hard to ignore: links, comments, etc.

But are these the measures? In terms of increasing awareness across the Internet perhaps. But more important than any numbers are the individual posts themselves. Each, on their own, had the power to touch people’s lives. These represent the real outcomes.

To highlight a few, Copywrite, Ink., in cooperation with BlogCatalog, invited any blogger who participated in this campaign to submit a link and other measurements for consideration in our Blog For Hope Post Competition.

Six judges painstakingly read more than 100 entries, representing a mere sliver of Bloggers Unite posts written by thousands of bloggers. From these, we tasked ourselves to select eight. While there are no losers, we’re pleased to highlight a sampling of the work from caring individuals who made a difference. The work speaks for itself...

Highlighted Bloggers — Three Powerful Posts

First Place — Lisa Wines, O my word

Wines wrote about an everyday hero. Robert Miley (pictured), an artist in Phoenix, has developed a workshop curriculum for abused children and at-risk youth to discover themselves and gain empathy for others through art. Art is often used as a medium for children who have suffered abuse to transform their pain and association with the abuse into something manageable. Wines’ efforts to recognize Miley through Bloggers Unite brings awareness to a technique that helps victims cope with abuse.

Second Place — Barbara Sweat (Jane), Jericho Monster

Sweat chronicled how verbal abuse sometimes escalates from put-downs under the guise of jokes into disparaging comments that aim to control, manipulate, and intimidate, leaving an impact on the victim forever. She then gave readers information from several sources and prompted the victims of verbal abuse to contact the state branch of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence if the abuse crosses into domestic violence.

Third Place — Verna Corbett, Keep It Simple Solutions

Corbett revealed a very personal story of how, by learning more about the foster care system, she was personally touched and moved to action. Her family has adopted ten children from the foster care program and is now working to build a group of homes for siblings, children and youth on 80 acres of land so they may receive the caring, understanding, and unconditional love they deserve.

Honorable Mentions — Five More Touching Posts

Hartley B. Singer, PetLvn summarized dozens of powerful posts to call for an end to animal abuse. He includes information about what you can do to help.

The NAFASG Team, NAFASG captivated readers with a powerful tribute to a Nurin Jazlin, who was abducted and murdered. The story is shocking; the call to action memorable, with scores of people joining their efforts to end child abuse.

CreativeBlogger used ProBlogs to share the undeniably tragic story from Africa — adults infected with HIV sexually assaulting children, which is a death sentence beyond the abuse these children already endure.

Cynthia Newcomer Daniel, Jewelry Tales, gave up space to recount her personal story of abuse, demonstrating true courage in sharing her story so that others might know they are not alone.

Saphyre Rose, Sun And Moon Sorcery, who is a 25-year cancer survivor, stopped us with a powerful introduction: I was a victim of abuse. She shares her personal experience and prompts victims to have the courage to take action.

In the weeks ahead, I will be contacting the first three bloggers, mentioned above, to make arrangements so they may receive additional recognition. For details, please visit the competiton post. We will also be profiling one of the first three bloggers, every Sunday, starting next week. Thank you for touching us. Thank you for making a difference. And thank you for giving us hope.

Outing The Media: J.K. Rowling

As hard as it is to imagine, one of the hottest topics on the Internet is the sexuality of a fictitious character. For days now, new media and mainstream media have all weighed in with opinions on the “Outing of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,” the headmaster of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series.

It doesn’t really matter. And yet, it seems to matter.

The outing came seven days ago at New York City's Carnegie Hall. A young fan made the mistake of asking whether the headmaster had ever been in love.

"Dumbledore is gay, actually," said J.K. Rowling before revealing Dumbledore loved a fellow wizard, Gellert Grindelwand.

So, the correct answer might have easily been “yes, …” making a better distinction, perhaps, between love and orientation. But Rowling did not, and now the topic she chose is overshadowing any other merit of her books, good, bad, or indifferent. And that’s a shame. She hasn’t been able to go anywhere without it being asked about again, and again, and again. Her choice, I suppose.

Brands are fragile things, even for fictitious characters. Not that there is anything wrong with Dumbledore being gay, but Rowling has only succeeded in confusing an identity that fans have established. It could have been any other shocker; she could have said he was a Republican or Democrat. It doesn’t really fit because orientation isn’t what the stories are about.

From a communication standpoint, the dramatic brand shift for Dumbledore isn’t so much about him being gay as it is about a shift in his established brand. If you do not believe me that dramatic shifts mean something, ask Sen. Larry Craig.

Or maybe, as a complete contrast, we can look at Ellen DeGeneres. Nobody cares about her orientation anymore; they do seem to care about her joviality, which came apart over the Mutts & Moms controversy. In Canada, the brand bamboozling revolved around Stéphane Dion.

My point is that reactions in the media and around the Web have less to do with what was announced and more to do with the degree of separation from what seemed to have been established. We might all keep that in perspective.

For example, Mark Harris, writing about Potter for Entertainment Weekly (linked above), made a poignant remark. He pointed readers to a story by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that shows only 1.1 percent of characters on scripted network series are gay, which he says is an underrepresentation of their presence in the population. Maybe so or maybe not.

There are many shows where orientation doesn’t even enter the equation. Do we really need to know the orientation of every character? Big Bird, maybe?

This time around, I think Bill O’Reilly might have called it right. Rowling seems to be a provocateur. After years of claiming she has difficultly with the press, is "thin-skinned," and dislikes the fickle nature of reporting, none of that seems to be an issue any longer. It’s invited.

In many ways, Rowling’s revelation is a bigger brand shift than the one imposed on Dumbledore. With a single sentence, she demonstrated the sometimes triviality of reporting today; and proven she isn’t all that thin-skinned after all.

It makes you wonder. Who was really outed after Carnegie Hall?

Mixing Nuts: Ragan Communications

If you ever want to see an organization that inspires admiration and loathing at the same time, look no further than Ragan Communications. If you don’t know, it is a publisher of information about corporate communication and internal communication. It also hosts a social network called myRagan, which is both useful and clunky at the same time (but better than when I first reviewed it).

Admiration

On one hand, Ragan Communications gave Michael Klein a great platform to discuss the merits and shortfalls of the International Association of Business Communicators’ new staff-driven strategic plan. David Murray also has a fine sum-up about the communication backlash.

If you don’t know, IABC is a professional network of more than 15,000 business communication professionals in over 70 countries. One of the cornerstone principles for IABC is that it is a member-driven organization, which pinpoints why a staff-written strategic plan (that few have seen) may not be palatable for many members, especially because it was set in motion before it was released for review. Yikes! Time to brush up on those “communicating change” skill sets.

I haven’t had the opportunity to fully immerse myself in the real issues, but I’ll poke around next week. One thing I do know, having been around IABC for quite some time, members sometime feel that they do not have enough input into shaping the organization. When members do mention that, it’s usually defined as lambasting the organization.

For the moment, I will mention if Klein is right and “increasing mainstream media mentions by 20 percent” is part of the plan, IABC might have a rocky road ahead. Counting media mentions is not a suitable measure, which, ironically, is something I learned from IABC. More importantly, Julie Freeman (IABC president) and Todd Hattori (IABC chair) must demonstrate due diligence so this does not turn into an “us vs. them” communication challenge. More next week.

Loathing

Sometimes Ragan Communications buzz e-mails are so silly it’s hard to take Ragan seriously. For example, in marketing its upcoming 90-minute webinar with Southwest Airlines next Tuesday, the e-mail headline reads:

Q: How many customer comments are there on Southwest’s blog this month? A: 209. The time is now to start a dialogue with your customers.

The irony here is that I can almost guarantee Southwest Airlines does not include blog comment counts as part of their organization’s business objectives. (I won’t bother mentioning the clunky headline structure.)

Fortunately, Southwest Airlines’ Brian Lusk, manager of customer communication and corporate editor, and Paula Berg, public relations manager, are including: how to align a corporate blog with your organization's business objectives. So, the whole comment count thing is mute as a selling point. There is little doubt that Southwest Airlines seems to know the difference between outcomes and blog buzz even if Ragan Communications likes to mix them up.

In fact, Southwest Airlines has one of the better customer-focused blogs around. More importantly, this foray into social media is partly responsible for the best opening three quarters in the airline's history. Right on. Southwest Airlines also attributes $150 million in ticket sales to its "Ding!" widget.

So let’s see … if you are in the target audience, what might resonate: $150 million or 209 comments? Sure, the comments are cool in that they demonstrate some customer engagement. The more I think about them, the more I see comments might even be worth adding to the qualitative research column (if you employ comments).

However, my main point here is that Ragan Communications irritates me because they dumb down communication value. Yes, it’s great fun for a select audience who understands something about social media, but it also drives away those who need to understand social media the most. More to the point: if you don’t have a blog, you certainly don’t care about comment counts.

Tracking Ads: Google & Nielsen

The shortcomings of the rating system as offered by Nielsen Media Research has become a popular target for television fans. And for good reason. However, if there is one thing Nielsen has been doing right, it is listening to consumers.

Recently, they told networks that they would no longer combine two airings of the same show. And, they are allowing longer time periods to count DVR viewers, which has increased some show's ratings as much as five percent. Both moves came out of public outcry.

Today, The New York Times reported that Google will be announcing a partnership today with the Nielsen Company in order to give "advertisers a more vivid and accurate snapshot of how many people are viewing commercials on a second-by-second basis, and who those people are."

“We want to bring all the advantages that we see in online advertising — like more accountability, a better sense of the audience, better tools to optimize a campaign — and bring them to television to make TV advertising more effective,” Michael Steib, director for television ads for Google told The New York Times.

Google has been experimenting with television advertising through a cable operator, the DISH Network, which reaches 13 million subscribers. Several advertising executives predicted that it would be only a matter of time before other cable operators signed up, making the measurement system offered by Google TV Ads more broadly available.

Seems we too were early in connecting the dots, seeing cable operators as both the most obvious answer to better measurements as well as the eventual convergence of television and the Internet. While no old media has ever been replaced by new media to date, it sure seems like all media is undergoing a rapid and dramatic transformation.

Increasing Traffic: Magazine Publishers

“The advertising dollar has never been more scrutinized, measured and quantified than it is today. What was once a bottomless pit of marketing capital emptied into the hands of advertising mavens, today’s advertising dollar is being doled out with expectations for a tangible return on investment.” — Thomas Banks, CEO, FlexSCAN, Health Business Week

You know the Internet is having an impact when Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) compiles independent research that documents how various online and offline media influence consumer behavior online.

The research, which includes third-party surveys and new quantitative analysis, is aimed at the role of media in driving online traffic, search, and purchase behavior, as well as the role of media in driving consumer response to online video ads. The conclusions, published across several reports, demonstrate the significance of an integrated communication. Here is a sampling:

• Offline media perform well in driving Web traffic and search — often better than online media, even when URL addresses are missing or not prominent.

• Media synergy is important, although each medium influences online behavior differently and plays a distinctive role.

• Looking at qualified search—those consumers ready to make a purchase—paints a different picture of media usage than total search, which is most often the focus of advertisers.

• When looking at the role individual media play in driving Web results, magazines most consistently drive Web traffic and search.

One must-read is How Media Drives Online Success that includes the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) study. It looks at which media performs best at influencing consumers to start a search for merchandise online.

Another must-read is a two-part report, Accountability and Accountability II, that also looks at consumer online behavior. One of the most significant findings from my point of view was the impact of integrated communication or what the MPA calls "media synergy."

Media synergy: more media gets better results.

While we were not surprised that integrated communication had a better impact across all measures than one medium — brand awareness, advertising awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent — we were taken by the extent. Print (magazines), television, and online advertising, when used together, delivered 2.5 times to 4 times more impact than one medium alone.

However, what the study does not include, is that magazine advertising (which the report says drives the most Web traffic and search) tends to be more in sync with accurate message delivery than television or online advertising. Television advertising tends to lean toward overly creative, sometimes convoluting the message, whereas online advertising, for the most part, tends to be devoid of message in favor of logo banners.

Until communicators sync messages, internally and externally, it seems likely that communication and marketing plans will continue to deliver mixed results. Public relations and social media practitioners would also be well served to be on the same page, shifting focus to stories and opinions about anything to get ink and toward reinforcing their core message.

What does that mean? It means to stop asking the majority of people to learn 100 things about your company on one medium and focus more on that one point across all media (as your budget allows). One core message across multiple communication streams will deliver better results than multiple messages across one stream.

Wow. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Screwing Originators: How To Do Things

Flattery will get you everywhere. At least that's what HowToDoThings.com seems to think.

“We recently visited your website's copywriteink.com page and thought that as a trusted expert in the field, you might want to write a "how to" article or articles on a topic that you are knowledgeable and passionate about.”

I declined, with exception to one tiny part (explained later), but not because it was a form letter. I declined because if you put aside the gratuitous e-mail and read their content submission agreement, you might find one of the most overreaching and abusive policies that I’ve ever had the privilege, er, pain, to read.

Sure, I’m not an attorney and this is not legal advice, but even slivers of HowToDoThings’ 4-page “take everything, leave nothing” submission policy provides a very clear picture of why content originators (bloggers, writers, etc.) need to read, very carefully, any such terms before entrusting their content to anyone.

You hereby irrevocably assign, transfer, and quitclaim to HowToDoThings (or such third party/ies as HowToDoThings may elect) all right, title, and interest. You may have or hereafter acquire in and to all Published Content, either directly or indirectly, along with all intellectual property rights and other proprietary rights relating to all Published Content, including any and all registrations with respect thereto, whether foreign or domestic, and all renewals and extensions thereof, as well as related rights of priority under international conventions, and all rights to sue and recover damages for past infringements.

Right. For the promise of a 50-50 Google AdSense split on that page (according to the e-mail), the originator would surrender all rights, indefinitely, including intellectual property rights that are a derivative of the work, to the site. That’s terrible and it gets worse.

You authorize HowToDoThings and its successors and assigns to use one or more of the following: (a) your name; (b) pertinent biographical information relating to You; and (c) your likeness in connection with the publication of any Published Content, as well as any derivative works based upon any Published Content, without further compensation or consideration to You, and without your further review or consent.

In other words, not only will they own the originator’s content, but the originator’s likeness and name as well, and reserve the right to attach it to derivative works without review or consent. And there’s more.

If HowToDoThings requests that You sign any documents or take any other actions to confirm the rights granted under this Agreement, You agree to do so. You hereby irrevocably appoint HowToDoThings as your attorney-in-fact (which appointment is coupled with an interest) for the purpose of executing such documents on your behalf.

Not only would the originator sign over their content, likeness, and intellectual property rights related to the work, but also appoint HowToDoThings as their attorney-in-fact, indefinitely, with permission to act on their behalf. All this despite another provision that claims this is not an agency, partnership, joint venture, employee-employer or franchisor-franchisee relationship. Unless, of course, there is any libel or copyright infringement. Then, the originator is on their own to protect what the site claims as their property. And there’s more.

You hereby grant to HowToDoThings the exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, transferable, worldwide right and license (including the right to sublicense through multiple tiers of sublicensees) to use, reproduce, publish in any form, whether tangible or electronic, and sell all Published Content.

I know what some might think. In a world where people are so willing to share, isn’t it a genuine offer to split Google AdSense? Unfortunately, there is no provision of this in the submission agreement. But there is a provision about such promises.

This Agreement, together with the Guidelines, which are incorporated into and made a part of this Agreement, each as in effect and posted on the Site from time to time, constitute the entire agreement between You and HowToDoThings and supersede all prior understandings, whether written or oral with regard to the subject matter of this Agreement.

Add to all this a termination agreement that allows HowToDoThings to terminate the agreement at anytime (with them keeping your content, likeness, and intellectual property rights), and it’s easy to see why content originators need to read these agreements closer than ever. That is, unless you can afford to pursue arbitration in San Mateo County, Calif., which is your only recourse according to the agreement. So what tiny part of what they are doing do I agree to?

We are actively looking for your feedback on our site.

Okay, here is some feedback: I think the submission agreement makes HowToDoThings look like an online piranha, attempting to take advantage of and prey off of less experienced content originators by stealing away their rights, names, likenesses, and intellectual property for the promise of, well, nothing and the loss of, well, everything.

The only rights online publishers need to request is first electronic rights, which would grant such a site the right to publish original content first, perhaps with a built-in provision that the originator cannot resell the material for a set time period, not to exceed 30-60 days. While it makes sense for publishers to retain bylines and likenesses with the published content, it is ridiculous to ask for any provision that assigns such identifiers to derivative works that may or may not have anything to do with the originator.

By the way, it also pays to read the terms of social networks. Some are playing shell games too, claiming to be distribution channels on one hand and publishers on the other hand. Their definition depends exclusively on their win factor.